


to tell me that i'm bright

by fairytalelights



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Identity Issues, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-10-26 11:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17744981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytalelights/pseuds/fairytalelights
Summary: Philomena Lester has always had long hair. It's just a fact that people use to describe her: She likes video games, has her head stuck in the clouds most of the time and she has long hair. Phil has the kind of long hair that other girls dream about. It reaches down to her hips and still doesn't go brittle at the tips.Danielle always joked, from the beginning, that her hair was what made her fall in love with Phil.or, Phil wants to cut her hair.





	to tell me that i'm bright

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [phandomficfests](https://phandomficfests.tumblr.com) for organizing this challenge and thank you to Jana for beta-ing this for me, your enthusiastic responses are my main writing motivation at this point!

Philomena Lester has always had long hair. It's just a fact that people use to describe her: She likes video games, has her head stuck in the clouds most of the time and she has long hair.

Phil has the kind of long hair that other girls dream about. It reaches down to her hips and still doesn't go brittle at the tips.

When she was a teenager, she hated the colour, a murky brown with a tinge of red in it, but in uni she discovered how good it looked in black, how it made guys (and sometimes _girls_ ) turn to look at her.  
Danielle always joked, from the beginning, that her hair was what made her fall in love with Phil.

  
  
“I want to cut my hair.” Phil expected a few reactions to that, but Dan not only dropping the plate she was holding, but also almost tripping and going down with it were not high on her list.

“Or not,” she immediately amends, trying to get a read on her girlfriend, who's currently trying to pick up the broken plate pieces and resolutely not looking at Phil.

“It was just an idea,” she mumbles, but she knows Dan can hear the lie in her voice. It wasn't just an idea.

She would have brought it up much more casually if it was, wouldn't have made such an announcement out of it, would probably not have made Dan drop dinner plates in the process.

“Cut your hair like, a bit, or full on _cut your hair_?” Dan asks, carefully, but Phil can still hear the apprehension in her voice.

Phil gulps. “I was thinking about, um, a pixie cut?”

From her spot on the couch she can almost see Dan swallowing past her emotions and going into 'supportive girlfriend mode'.

“Okay, cool. Why?” she asks calmly. Sometimes Phil hates the talking methods Dan's therapist taught her with a burning passion.

Phil can still see the uncertainty on her face. She should ask what's wrong, why a mention of a haircut is throwing Dan off this much. That's what being in a healthy, adult relationship _is_.

Instead, Phil just shrugs. “No reason. Forget it. Was a stupid idea.”

She can see Dan opening her mouth, but then she just lets Phil drop it, maybe hoping they both misinterpreted this whole conversation and it actually _was_ the casual remark Phil was going for in the first place.

They don't bring it up again for the rest of the evening.

  
  
The thing is, Phil can't stop thinking about it. She isn't quite sure when it started, maybe months ago, maybe years.

Maybe it started when she came out to her mum, who was the most supportive person she could have wished for, until, one evening, she asked, “You're not going to cut your hair though, are you? You look so pretty with your long hair.”

And Phil, fourteen years old, just shook her head, laughed, “I'm bi anyway, not a lesbian.”

The way she said it, she realizes now, was more of a defence than anything. _I'm not that queer_ , it meant back then. _I'm still normal, mum, look at me._

She held onto that normalness for such a long time now that it's hard to let go of it.

Especially now that it has turned into a _brand_. She's the girl on Youtube with the fringe and the hair that goes to her hips. She's never wanted to be a beauty channel, but there was such an overwhelming amount of requests that she made a few hairstyling videos in the past anyway.

The girl with the hair from Radio One. That's her. Dan's right, she can't change that.

 

Dan has always had slightly longer hair, a bit longer than shoulder length.

It's shorter now that she has stopped straightening it, but no one really cared, except for the part of her fan base that celebrated it as a sign of more confidence.

Phil thinks about those people when she thinks about cutting her hair. She thinks at least they might be supportive.

 

“It's about being queer,” she blurts out a few days later, randomly, while they are sitting on the couch and scrolling through their respective laptops.

Dan looks up, blinks at her. Phil takes a deep breath.

“I want to cut my hair because I want to be read as a queer girl, I want people to see. To see _me_.”

Dan, for some reason, _laughs_. It's tinged with a hint of bitterness. “You're worried there aren't enough people who speculate about your sexuality? Newsflash, Phil, when you open any social media website of your choice you can see hundreds of people doing exactly that every day. What more do you want?”

Phil just stares at her for a moment. Then she shuts her laptop, gets up and leaves without a word.

 

They are fighting in a way that they haven't fought in a long time, because they are trying to be all about communication nowadays.

They've fought this way a lot in the past, though, silently passing each other in the hallway, exchanging only the most necessary conversation about work or house chores.

The difference is that, back then, they actually used both of their beds sometimes, switching between them when Dan wanted the comfort of her own room or Phil couldn't take the fact that Dan's bed was literally falling apart during sex anymore.

Now, Phil's room is not an actual room anymore, it's a film set, and she doesn't even enter it unless she's filming a video. So she kind of just hangs out in the gaming room for a while.

'A while' turns into a few hours and she starts to contemplate how uncomfortable it would be to sleep on this couch, when Dan walks in.

It's earlier than she would have given in a few years ago, when their passive aggressive fights could go on for days, until they just _had_ to talk to each other at some point.

But now, Phil has to remind herself, Dan is in a much better place, and as much as she makes fun of her 'therapy tools', she has to admit how much they have helped the both of them.

“I'm sorry,” Dan starts. “I've been thinking about it all afternoon and I know it was a shitty thing to say. I kind of knew it was shitty the moment I opened my mouth. I'm working on better self control.” She chuckles a bit.

“Can I?” she gestures and Phil nods before Dan sits down next to her.

“It was a stupid, selfish thing, but I,” her voice almost turns into a whisper at this point. “I just love your hair,” she finishes with a quiet sigh, her hand going to play with Phil's hair, just as she has done hundreds of times before.

Phil loves Dan touching her hair, but she loves Dan touching her in general and she doesn't think that will change just because there's less hair to touch.

“I know,” Phil answers, just as quietly. It feels like such a tentative moment. Sometimes Dan plays so tough that Phil forgets how _fragile_ she can get in moments like this, how easy she is to hurt.

Phil doesn't want to be the person to hurt her, but she also knows that Dan sometimes needs to be confronted with things instead of coddled, that she will run away and hide otherwise.

“I reacted in a stupid way,” Dan sighs. “So. Please explain the hair thing to me. I _want_ to get it, you know I do.” Having Dan focused on her with such an intensity is something that Phil will never get tired of. It's a rare thing to have, because Dan tends to be all over the place, but during sex, or during moments like this, Phil is reminded how much she loves being the centre of her attention.

She leans into Dan, lets the way she combs her fingers through her hair ground her.

“I'm not like you. The only thing that even remotely screams queer about me are the plaid shirts I used to wear and they have now become mainstream fashion, so no one cares. I'm not good at slipping all of my female celebrity crushes into conversations or swoon at Hayley Kiyoko with my audience. I talk about my fun coloured socks and the weird things that happen to me and what we did in the last few days. I don't know how to-”

“Signal?” Dan says softly, and Phil nods, relieved.

“People say that you're in a glass closet Dan, because you're _you_ and you've gradually become more open these past few years, but I don't _want_ to take a few more years.”

“And,” now this is the hard part, the part she's afraid is gonna hurt Dan, but she still has to say it, just for the sake of saying it, because the words need to be out there. “I don't want my queerness to only be defined by my relationship with you. I _know_ people speculate, but it's different than actually feeling loved by your community, you know?”

Dan sighs, still combing her fingers through Phil's hair. “I actually think you'd look great with short hair. I was just resisting because I hate change.”

“Me too,” Phil answers, “Maybe even more than you.”

Dan pulls herself into Phil's lap. Phil can tell that she's finally getting that this is a huge and scary step for her, that it isn't a spur of the moment decision.

“You'll always be a queer girl, Phil, no matter how long your hair is. But I get it. I get wanting to do something radical. I get wanting to reaffirm your identity.” She kisses her then, long and deep, in the way that only Dan can, with the same intensity that she has always kissed her.

She's right. Phil _knows_ that she's a queer girl in these moments, her girlfriend on her lap, tangled up so deeply in each other that she forgets which limbs actually belong to her.

She still needs to do this for herself.

 

“I watched the video where Safiya cut her own hair and she had to go and get it fixed afterwards,” Dan warns her.

“Good thing I'm not cutting my own hair then,” Phil smiles, putting on a brave face. She knows that it's probably gonna look messy if she lets Dan do it, but she needs this to be a private moment for just the two of them.

Phil braids her hair into a ponytail, just like the tutorial suggested, and then Dan makes the cut. It feels surprisingly freeing, a literal weight off of her shoulders.

Then she lets Dan carefully chop away more of it. Phil knows how meticulously Dan is following the tutorial, and the result isn't bad. It's honestly quite great.

A professional would have done this neater, but Phil doesn't think she wants it to be neat, not this time anyway.

“Do you like it?” Dan asks carefully, after Phil has inspected herself in the mirror for such a long time that the silence is getting uncomfortable.

“Yes,” Phil whispers, a bit in awe. It isn't that it looks objectively better than before. There are arguments to be made for both hairstyles and how well they fit with her head shape.

She just feels so much more like _herself_. She pictures herself going out to buy groceries, and some ignorant old lady immediately labelling her as a lesbian in her head. The thought makes her giddier than it probably should.

“Do _you_ like it?” She's smiling when she turns to Dan, in a breathless, relieved sort of way.

“Yeah,” Dan breathes, her eyes wide while she's staring at Phil, as if she's surprised by _how much_ she likes it. “Yeah, I-” Dan clears her throat. “I love it. I love _you_.”

They don't say it as often as other couples, maybe, but they do say it fairly often, so Phil shouldn't preen as much as she does.

It feels like Dan really _gets it_ now, gets why Phil wanted to do this.

 

“You can still play with my hair,” Phil reassures her a few hours later on the couch, repositioning herself so her head is in Dan's lap.

“Oh, can I, your majesty? Do I hear a please somewhere in there?” Dan laughs, but does as requested.

“It's really soft,” she whispers. She's half-massaging Phil's scalp as well, so it definitely feels different to Phil than usual. Good different.

“Do you think viewers will be able to tell?” Phil asks. “Why I did it?”

A few years ago that would have been the thing they would have both been the most afraid of. Now she's almost excited at the thought. She did it mostly for herself, but also, in a big part, for the way others perceive her. It feels complicated.

“Not everyone,” Dan replies. She seems like she really thought about the answer. “But we have a lot of queer girls in our audience. They will know. They knew when you had long hair as well. Now, it's just like, a tiny nod to them.”

“Yeah,” Phil answers. It's late and she can feel her eyes drooping already. “I think I'm gonna make a video about it and call it 'Why I Changed My Emo Hair'.”

“You do that,” Phil hears Dan chuckle, before her hands soothe her into sleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Title taken from "rainbow" by dodie.  
> If you liked it, you can leave comments or kudos here, or reblog the [fic post](http://lookslikefairytale.tumblr.com/post/183121093900)!
> 
> Also, in case anyone is interested, Lena Waithe said a few [amazing things](http://lesbianelsas.tumblr.com/post/176833583794/lena-waithe-explains-the-significance-of-cutting) about this subject. I only found this gifset after I've written this fic, so it's not inspired by it, but I thought it was very relevant to the story! 
> 
> (I'm here on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/fairytalelights) and on [Tumblr](https://lookslikefairytale.tumblr.com), if you wanna say hi.)


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